November 8, 2009 by gardengeekette
That is, the scrapbooking kind of crop, rather than the gardening kind of crop. Yesterday I went with my friend J to another crop at Daisy Lane in Mattoon, IL. 12 hours straight of scrapbooking (with a little tiny bit of scrapbook supply shopping thrown in– they have so much great stuff there!). I got way more finished than I had thought!
I have somehow 
acquired a reputation for being “organized” and “prepared”… imagine that! haha! When I went to the first crop back in the beginning of October, I was really worried that I would have a creativity freeze and not get anything done the whole day. So I searched around online and came up with a few “challenges” to work on, and came prepared with a specific set of pages that I wanted to make. This time I didn’t have quite as much planning done and I didn’t know how much would get finished. But I got more done than I had expected!
Here are some small photos of the pages that I made yesterday. Click on them to go directly to their individual gallery pages at twopeasinabucket.
Tree Hunting
Opening Gifts
ho ho ho (Christmas 2006)
Lefse in Minneapolis
The “Tree Hunting” page was made using a sketch for a challenge (ls126) on the Let’s Scrap community.
I really enjoyed the chatting and good-natured ribbing throughout the day. It’s been fun to make new scrapbooking friends and share tips and even a few supplies.
Posted in not about gardening, scrapbooking | Leave a Comment »
November 6, 2009 by gardengeekette
Tomorrow I’m headed to my second all-day crop at Daisy Lane. I’m pretty excited about it! I’ve been collecting up sketches, challenges, and ideas to jump-start my projects tomorrow. I’d like to get at least 2 layouts finished, whether they are 1-page or 2-page. If I get more finished, I’ll be thrilled! 
Maybe my next post will be about my finished pages!
Even though it’s Friday, I’m going to post my Thankful Thursday here, too…
*I’m really thankful for scrapbooking. That sounds silly, but I am. I love thinking about layouts and combining creativity with preserving my memories. And it’s a great way to spend time with my best friend!
*I’m thankful that the persistent issues with my paychecks are gradually being sorted out– I think.
*I’m thankful for the good fellowship in my Bible Study and Small Group.
*I’m thankful that I haven’t gotten sick, even though this week I’ve kind of felt like I was coming down with something.
*I’m thankful that I was able to make it through a grueling week of seven TA observations + an observation of a high school class… and still get a big chunk for my side project completed!
Posted in Thankful Thursdays, not about gardening, scrapbooking | Leave a Comment »
November 1, 2009 by gardengeekette
Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet
We had a great time putting our costumes together this year! Husband and I, after many ideas and iterations, finally decided to do a period costume. We decided on the Regency era because we were able to find a good men’s pattern as well as a women’s pattern that were manageable in the span of a month. I used Butterick 3648 for Husband’s jacket and pants and Butterick 6630 (dress A) for my dress. Neither pattern was an “easy” one, but they both were reasonable in their difficulty. The directions were clear, and the sizing came out the way I expected (I lengthened the torso pieces and leg pieces for Husband since he’s tall and otherwise followed the patterns exactly.). Husband made his top hat out of cardboard and covered it with leftover fabric from his pants.
Mr. Darcy
Mr. Darcy (back view)
Elizabeth Bennet
Elizabeth Bennet (back view)
We have a tradition that this stuffed hamster (his name is Boo) gets in on the costume each year. Husband made him some little accessories, and we think he looked quite dapper!
Boo
All-in-all, I think our costume party was a hit!
Posted in costume, not about gardening, sewing | 3 Comments »
October 29, 2009 by gardengeekette
I’m thankful for so many things. God has been blessing me with a great sense of contentment recently. It is easy to start getting “want-y” when I look at what other people are doing or have, etc., but God has been reminding me of all the wonderful things He has blessed me with right here, right now.
among those things:
* a wonderful husband who encourages me and gets excited about my little successes. we have been having fun with creating our Halloween costume and we went to a local orchard this weekend. simple pleasures!
* a Bible study and a small group; both of which are great fellowship times and good, challenging conversations about God’s Word.
* great friends, with whom I have had really fun times recently (you know who you are!! )
* a good job, where I’m learning a lot!
* a day at home today, which I used to run 4 miles on the treadmill (then walk 0.5 mi), complete a couple scrapbook pages, and bake an apple pie. I was so *happy* today! and then on top of that, I got a box of scrapbooking goodies in the mail
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
October 29, 2009 by gardengeekette
Today was already a good day (hopefully I’ll post more about that in a Thankful Thursday post later), but then my husband came in with the mail, bearing a pizza-box sized package for me! Wooo hoooo!!
Inside was a wealth of scrapbooking goodies– products from Little Yellow Bicycle’s Halloween line from this year:
goodies from The Paperlife's Scraptime giveaway!
It is the giveaway prize I won at The PaperLife blog (see the post here!). That week, The Paperlife was featuring Christine, the host of Scraptime, which is a really cool blog that updates a few days per week with a video episode that highlights a product, a tool, or a technique.
I’m so excited to use these goodies to scrapbook our Halloween party this year!
Posted in not about gardening, scrapbooking | 1 Comment »
October 27, 2009 by gardengeekette
Over at The Paperlife (a blog and scrapbooking community), Amy Coon asked for people to send in Halloween layouts and projects for her to feature all this week. I thought I’d send in my most recent Halloween pages (I made them at the crop at the beginning of October), and they’re included in today’s post (look for the orange and black layout by “qsogirl”). I’m certainly not as fancy of a scrapper as some people, but I think it’s pretty fun to see my pages on a “real” scrapbooking blog
Posted in not about gardening, scrapbooking | 1 Comment »
October 26, 2009 by gardengeekette
I have really been in the mood to scrapbook recently, but haven’t been able to quite as much as I wanted because I was committed to sewing our costumes for this year. (I have found that I tend to go in cycles of what crafty type of thing I’m in the mood to do… sometimes all I want to do is sew, other times it’s scrapbook… anyone else like this?)
Each year we have a party for some friends from our Bible study and church and school, etc., and Husband and I really enjoy coming up with a creative costume together. It’s our “big project” for the year.
I won’t tell what our costumes are yet (we like to keep it as a surprise) but they involved *a lot* of sewing (more than in years past)– and I finished yesterday! I’m really proud of how everything turned out. I’ll certainly try to post photos of our costumes here after the party.
And now I’m planning on working on a few scrapbook pages this week!
Posted in costume, not about gardening, scrapbooking, sewing | Leave a Comment »
October 22, 2009 by gardengeekette
I’m registered to go to another crop!! It’s going to be at a scrapbooking store about an hour away from where I live– Daisy Lane. I went to a crop there at the beginning of October and had a blast. My friend J had been to one and told me it was a great time, and she invited me to this one. It was my first crop ever– it was great!! There was good, homemade food and snacks, and I had a great 12 hours of getting stuff done. I finished two 2-page spreads and a 1-page layout and got some work done on (and really pretty paper for) another couple layouts. If you know me and my scrapbooking style, this was getting *A LOT* done!
I’m sure these next few weeks will be full of planning what I can work on during this coming crop! Woo hoo! Plus, it will be a great to spend another day scrapbooking with J
Posted in not about gardening, scrapbooking | 2 Comments »
October 20, 2009 by gardengeekette
I started scrapbooking when my husband (then-boyfriend) and I were approaching our one year anniversary of dating. I decided that all the ticket stubs, photos, and other random ephemera needed a home and that I would make him a scrapbook. I slaved away for about 2 months and scrapbooked that entire year. I learned a lot about scrapbooking during those two months or so (I am still by no means an “advanced” scrapbooker), and I also got hooked. I mean, once you start scrapbooking your life, it’s awfully hard to just stop. Especially when you’re a saver like me. I have old tickets coming out my ears!
The night that I gave my husband (then boyfriend) the scrapbook, he proposed to me. And of course, from then on out, I knew I wanted to scrapbook our lives together. I got caught up with pages showing just after our engagement to the day before our wedding day, which was now over 3 years ago. I got very intimidated with the thought of putting together the pages dedicated to our wedding and honeymoon (still am!) and have moved on to scrapbooking some of the events in our lives since then.
So I’m officially setting a goal for myself here. I want to catch up on the “littler” events of life since our wedding (big vacations excluded, since they’re kind of overwhelming in themselves– so many pictures to deal with!) by the time we move to our next place, which will probably be next summer. I think this is a pretty reasonable goal, in a way, because then I won’t have so much random stuff to pack when we move– haha!
To help myself keep track, I have been using a list of pages to make that span from our wedding through Fall/Christmas of 2008 (yes, I am kind of infamous for my organization in some parts of my life). It needs to be updated, but I’ve definitely been checking some things off!
As part of this goal, I would like to learn how to be a more efficient scrapper. I think I made a little bit of progress on this front last weekend, when I sat down for our weekly Sunday-night-television-date and worked on a page while we watched The Next Iron Chef and Iron Chef America. The layout below was inspired by the most recent challenge on the ScrapFIT blog and combined with the Two Peas in a Bucket weekly challenge this week. Those challenges got my juices flowing and I could hardly move fast enough to get my “vision” down in the paper.
I am going to continue trying to use these different challenges to help me achieve my goal. I’m also going to try and set aside a bit of time each week to get a page (or 2-page spread) most of the way finished. We’ll see how well I can keep up!
Posted in not about gardening, scrapbooking | 3 Comments »
